Life Lessons
by Faeshadow
Summary: Sometimes it takes a child to teach the adults a lesson in life. Set right after Series 8. This is a long one. Note: BACK and WRITING! Yay
1. When Time Stands Still

Ye olde standard disclaimer: Nope, don't own Red Dwarf, or any of the characters besides Anna (oh and the bullies). Rimmer, Lister, Kryten, Kris, Holly, etc. are the brainchildren of the incredible Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. I can only hope to capture them in a way befitting Grant Naylor's visionâ€and end up failing badly, I'm sure.

All right, enough butt kissing...on to the story. Real short at first, other chapters will be longer as the story progresses and builds.

* * *

"Well, well...who do we have 'ere?"

Anna winced. She recognized that scratchy tone anywhere, as it was usually pointed at her. Ever since they met on Red Dwarf in the Teaching Room where a makeshift school was set up for the older children while they and their families traveled from Io to Earth. Having a member of the family in the Space Corps, this made interplanetary travel rather inexpensive, not to mention giving the families at least a fraction more time to spend together. For Anna, however, it was a perfect chance for her parents to fawn over her brother Robert, and forget she was ever born. It wasn't so bad, really. Now she had a chance to avoid her mother's chastisement over not being pretty enough, or smart enough, or outgoing enough to ever succeed in anything...even getting a rich husband. Never mind that she was only _fourteen_. What the smeg did she need to be looking for a husband now anyway?

A booted foot jabbed into her rib, and she blinked up at its owner. Jane Dawkins – self-confessed bully extraordinaire -- was peering down at her, harsh, pale eyes squinting. "Oi, didn' you hear me? I said get up."

Gulping, Anna stood, pressing her back against the wall of the corridor, mousy brown hair falling into her eyes. "Wh-what do you want, Jane?" she mumbled, silently praying Jane wasn't in a violent mood today. She spent two days in the medi-bay with a concussion the last time Jane was in one of her moods.

More of Jane's friends rounded the corner, slinking up behind their leader with hateful smirks. The larger girl hauled Anna up by her shirtfront so she could look the bully eye-to-eye. "I just want to 'play' with ya, kid. Innocent an' all," Jane smiled a disingenuous smile, then drug her along down the hallway as Anna kicked and struggled futilely.

"Aw, Janey, what are you doing? This is insane!" one of the other girls hissed in fear as the bigger girl popped open the stasis unit, the much smaller Anna still dangling from her grasp as the pudgy fingers of her other hand poked dumbly at the keys on the side of the unit.

"Janey," another girl cautioned, "Y'know you're gonna get yerself in trouble playin' with the stasis units. What if ya can't figure out how t'get her out?"

"Then _you_ will be goin' t'find an officer to get 'er out, now won't ya?" Jane Dawkins replied nonchalantly and tossed the girl into the machine, slamming the door shut.

Anna pounded at the walls of the stasis unit, blood pounding in her ears in panic. "LET ME OUT!!" she screamed, but they couldn't hear. The unit was airtight. _Oh God, don't let me die in here, _she thought miserably, hot tears slipping down her cheeks, _What if nobody comes looking for me? What if they forget about me? Its not like I'm much to be remembered anyway._

And then, everything stopped.


	2. A Wrong Turn?

"Rimmer!" Lister called out into the empty corridor, as the rest hung back in the room they had stepped into the dimension from. "Don't tell me that smeghead ran off and hid," he muttered and called out again, "RIMMER!"

Kryten did a sweep of the room with his hand-held scanner and stopped at a small pile of white powder. "Oh dear," the mechanoid frowned.

"What in the world is that stuff, Kryten?" Kris asked, kneeling down to pick up a handful of the stuff and letting it sift through her fingers.

The mechanoid thwacked the device a couple of times, cursing the thing in binary. "This can't be right, ma'am," he finally said in English, "but the scanner's readings say that its"

"Its what?"

"Who, ma'am."

Kochanski arched a brow, her eyes threatening Kryten with having his head ripped off and thrown into the garbage compactor if he didn't get on with it. "Excuse me?"

"Well, according to the scanner, that is..._you_, Miss Kochanski, ma'am."

"Holly popped onto the watch screen, smirking slightly. "Yep. Dead, Kris. You're dead."

"What the smeg are you on about, you addled computer? I'm right here!"

Holly rolled his eyes. "Gordon Bennett...never mind. The pile is what's left of you in this reality, apparently. Just enough to grit the path with if it snows." Again, the computer gave a little smirk at his joke, once told years ago – again, about Kristine Kochanski – to Dave when he awoke from stasis.

With a look of disgust, Kochanski shook the remaining powder off of her hand and got to her feet. "That...is...disturbing," she stammered, wide-eyed.

"Wait a smeggin' tick," Lister said as he returned to the room, "There's piles of this stuff all over th' place. Its just like when I got out of stasis! Do ya think...nah, it couldn't be that we went back in time on accident, to when I got outta stasis. Kris was in th' drive room, not in the captain's quarters."

"The scanner doesn't detect your, erm, "pile" in the room, sir," Kryten informed him.

Lister's impish face sprouted a large grin as he grabbed the Cat by the arm and tugged him along. "Then I may still be in there, and will be getting' out soon!"

"Heeeeeeeey!" the Cat yowled as they ran down the corridor towards the section of the ship where the stasis unit was kept, "Watch the silk, man! I'm gonna have a crease now!"


	3. Wildfire

Arnold's lungs burned. His eyes burned. _Everything_ on his body hurt, but his state of panic wouldn't let him stop running. All around, bright orange flames licked and roared as they devoured everything flammable in their path. And silently, the microbes eating away at the ship continued their mission, eating everything the flames hadn't, causing whole walls to buckle behind Rimmer, blocking off any chance of him turning back if he needed to.

_I can't die,_ he lied to himself in a feeble attempt to ease his panic. God, even his own inner voice sounded shrill and unconvincing in his head, _Death can't swing his scythe with his hands cupping his groin, now can he?_

Of course, there was still that other voice. The defeatist, self-loathing voice that reminded him that it just wouldn't be him to actually _win_ and get away to safety. The Grim Reaper was likely just waiting for him around a corner to swing his scythe and send him to whatever afterlife there was for him. _Surely if there is a Hell, _Arnold thought bitterly as he skittered aside to dodge a large, burning chunk of the ceiling that came crashing down, _I'm certainly going there._

The rest of his thoughts were interrupted by his very audible yelp as hands yanked him into a side hall and spun him around to come face-to-face with...his own eyes. Except they _couldn't_ be his eyes. They seemed stronger somehow, eyes that had gone to hell and back and came out stronger and wiser for it.

"What the smegging—"

"No time!" his better self yelled over the din of rending metal and roaring flames. Before Rimmer could argue, the other man grabbed his arm and pulled him down the hall towards the landing bay.

"Who the smeg are you?" Arnold screeched as he was being shoved behind the pilot's seat of his doppelganger's small ship.

The man leaned in close, his voice rising into an exact duplicate of Arnold's own. "I'm _you_, Smeghead! Now get your arse in there so we can get out of this death trap before it blows!"

Arnold just gulped and sank back into the small space he was given, his dark eyes wide with fear and confusion. Nothing was making sense anymore, but then again, after that incident with Cassandra and the time wand, when did things _ever_ make sense? "W-well," he stammered as the man climbed into the pilot's seat and fired up the engines, "You could at least give me you're name. It would be a lot better than calling you, 'hey you, with the silly fringe haircut' don't you think?"

"Arnold J. Rimmer, but just call me Ace."


	4. Family Ties

They stared at the stasis unit, dumbfounded. This was _definitely_ not Lister's reality, for in the little window his face would be staring back out at them, his hand held frozen in a sarcastic wave good-bye. Now, the window was empty.

"Aw, no," Dave moaned, "In this reality, _nobody_ was taken to stasis an' so nobody survived. The human race is gone."

The Cat rolled his eyes. "Tragic. Well, lets leave laundry-shoot nostrils here and _he_ can be the last human alive."

"And go where, you idiot?" Kris snapped, "That's why we didn't wait for Rimmer on the other side of that mirror. Red Dwarf is going to explode!"

The Cat's brown eyes welled up with unshed tears that threatened to spill over. "My suits!" he wailed mournfully.

"You'd think after over a year without 'em, he'd get over his obsession with suits," Lister murmured to Kochanski as Cat sniffled and almost magically produced a small hand mirror to make sure he didn't give himself a splotchy complexion.

"Just a moment, Mr. Lister, sir. There _is_ someone in the stasis unit," Kryten interrupted, peering down into the little window of the stasis unit, "She is just a very small human and was not tall enough to be seen in the window at first glance."

Dave pressed himself up to the door of the stasis unit and peered in. In fact there _was_ a very small human -- a teenaged girl to be exact – within the unit, frozen in time. He shivered at the sight; she wasn't hideously deformed or anything, nor did she sport terrible wounds, however. It was her face, turned up slightly as if she had been calling on some higher power to help her, her small fists pressed hard against the metal as if she had been beating at it with all her tiny might. The girl's cheeks were streaked with tears, one small drop of liquid glittering as it hung suspended in mid-air, where it was about to splash onto her tan, ship-issue technician's shirt that was several sizes too large to have been hers.

Lister's mouth dropped open as the final shock; the badge on the left breast of the shirt she wore read "Second Technician", and on the right it read, "Rimmer."

"A female, eh?" Cat spoke up, preening some more, "Maybe she'll like some cat lovin' after all this time!"

Lister shook his head, still numbly staring down at the girl as he spoke. "No, man, she's just a girl. Too young for you."

The Cat face returned to its former, mournful self. "Aw, man, I never get a female! Even in that parallel universe all I got was a dog!"

Snapping out of his state of shock for a moment, Dave hurriedly waved Kryten over. "Get this thing open, Krytes. This is just too weird."

As Kryten nodded and fiddled with the controls on the stasis unit, Kochanski put her hand on Lister's shoulder to calm him. "What's wrong, Dave? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"She's a...Rimmer."

He was about to relay the rest of the reason why she was quite a disturbing sight when his words were drowned out by the hiss of the stasis pod opening and a shrill, terror-filled scream bounced jarringly along the metal corridor.

"LET ME OOOOOOOUUUUUUUUT!" the girl wailed before stumbling back, realizing that the door was open. Immediately, she caught a glimpse of Kris, running and collapsing on the floor at her feet. "I'm – I'm -- I'm sorry Captain Kochanski!" she sobbed, clinging to a startled "Captain Kochanski's" pant leg, who simply stared down at the girl with frighteningly familiar hazel eyes, "T-they threw me in the stasis pod! P-p-please don't tell my parents! I'm begging you!"

Kryten bustled over and lifted the girl to her feet, practically clucking like a mother hen. Obviously the girl had seen a service 'droid before, because she didn't look at him as if he was a man with a rather disfiguring head injury. "There now, miss, you have us confused with the people of your dimension. You see, we used a device that should have sent us to a mirror image of our own dimension, but has apparently sent us to a completely different one," the mechanoid continued to prattle on as the girl stared blankly at the torrent of words, once again completely failing at consoling a crying female, "We came after a man who we _think_ might have come here by mistake as well. His name is --"

"Um, his name isn' important right now, Kryten," Lister interrupted hastily, not wanting to completely disturb the girl if she was who he thought she might be, "She's been in stasis, remember? She wouldn't have seen him come in."

"Oh. Yes, of course," Kryten said, nodding hurriedly to cover up his blunder.

Brushing her unruly hair out of her eyes, the girl took in a breath to calm her nerves. _I've wandered into one of those old Twilight Zone shows, haven't I? Either that or the whole ship is playing one big joke on me,_ she thought as she studied the people in front of her. She recognized David Lister, one of her father's ex-coworkers, who had been promoted into his place when her father was fired. That was the ultimate humiliation for him, she remembered. A man so lazy and inept, and yet the Space Corps thought he could do a better job in his position than he did. Mr. Lister was nice enough, but she didn't see much of him because Father forbade it. Well, that and he didn't spend much time with anyone outside his drinking buddies.

And Kristine Kochanski. Captain Kochanski. High class all the way...which meant common shlubs like Anna were for the most part overlooked like one would overlook a speck of dust on the ground. The fact that she was here, now, startled her. Unless something catastrophic happened, letting out a girl who'd been thrown in the stasis lock by bullies would at the _most_ be delegated to the Officers. Perhaps the 'droid wasn't a few chips short of a motherboard after all. Perhaps they weren't the people she thought they were.

"What's your name, dear?" Kochanski asked, her dark brows knitting together as she stared at the "Rimmer" patch on the technician's shirt she was wearing.

The girl straightened, smoothing down her shirt. Even if Father wasn't here, she wasn't going to make a mockery of their name...as he had. "Anna. Anna Rimmer."

The Cat nearly fainted.


	5. Looking in the Mirror

The Wildfire shuddered violently as it sped away from the exploding wreckage of the Red Dwarf, chunks of metal flying past the small spacecraft. Ace turned and looked at the man cowering behind his seat and shook his head. In a way, he knew how the other Ace must have felt when they first met years ago on the Starbug. Still, he also knew how it felt to be this Arnold, so he had a bit more sympathy for him, but not much.

"You have some explaining to do, m'laddo," Arnold demanded, his nostrils flaring angrily as they were wont to do.

"Yes, I suppose I do," Ace said patiently, losing the macho "Ace" voice, "It's a bit complicated. You and I are the same person. Normally I go around looking up other Rimmers from other dimensions, but you and I are _both_ from this dimension. I left the Dwarf a few years ago to become another in a long line of Ace Rimmers. I was returning to this dimension for a visit and a bit of a holiday, when my computer detected another Rimmer on the ship. I was just as baffled as you are now, Arnold. Upon further investigation she informed me that you _were_ in fact me, who had been resurrected by nanobots."

Arnold nodded. "Yeah, Kryten told me that, and that before then I – well _you_ – had been around as a hologram, but that your light bee had been destroyed. Shouldn't you be..."

"Dead? Or really, dead _again_?" the original, hologram Rimmer shook his head, "Kryten told you that because that's what Lister told everyone. He's the only one who knows that the destroyed light bee is from the Ace that helped get us off the ocean planet after Starbug crashed."

"So, if you're me, why do _you_ have a hairstyle that I wouldn't be caught smegging _dead_ in?"

The hologram self-consciously blew his blond fringe out of his eyes. Then, with a sigh, he tugged the wig off, revealing the familiar head of short, brown curls. "Its part of the Ace persona. I know it looks ridiculous, but when I agreed to become Ace, I agreed to everything that came with it, this bacofoil monstrosity I'm wearing along with it," he explained, tugging on the collar of his flight suit.

Arnold stared out the window for a long while, trying to wrap his head around all that he'd been told. Kryten had given him the run-down on the nanobots, but not about him once being a hologram. That struck Rimmer as odd; why the smeg would _he_ be brought back? Certainly Lister and the others didn't really need him for anything. He wasn't good at anything. Lister didn't even _like_ him. It didn't make any sense. "Why me...er, you...um, us?" he asked quietly.

"Why was I brought back as a hologram? It was Holly's idea to keep Lister sane."

Rimmer's eyebrows shot up his forehead. "Well, Holly hasn't been known for his inspired ideas."

"It worked, didn't it?" Ace pointed out.

"That," Rimmer said, leaning back and crossed his arms over his chest, "is a matter of opinion."

His other self laughed, and the sound seemed foreign to Arnold. Even though Ace dropped the macho act, the laugh didn't sound Rimmerish. It wasn't strained, or nervous, or bitter. It didn't sound like he was waiting with dread for that punch line that always came at his expense. It sounded natural, yet alien at the same time. "You have a point, Arnold," he said and opened his mouth to say something else when a female voice interrupted his train of thought.

"Ace, darling, I've located the dimension where your friends are located. Dimension 946."

Ace cleared his throat and returned to the "macho" voice. "I'm forever in your debt, my dear. Lets get going, shall we?"


	6. Not My Child

"A Rimmer??" Lister asked for about the fifth time, his face mirroring the baffled looks of his crewmates as they stared down at the increasingly irritated girl in front of them.

Anna huffed, and a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes blew up and away from her face. "Yes, I'm a Rimmer."

"Arnold _Judas_ Rimmer is your dad?" Dave, once again, asked.

"For smeg's sakes, yes!" the girl yelled, forgetting herself for a moment. She took a breath, then spoke again, quietly, "Why do you keep asking me that?"

Lister opened his mouth to speak, but Kris quickly hushed him with an elbow to the ribs. "Its just, you see," she began, trying to be as tactful as possible, "Our Arnold, from, er, the other dimension -- that we came from you see – he's just not what we'd call –"

"…someone even a sex-starved hairy GELF would want to mate with," Cat added, flashing a huge grin as the others groaned.

"Nice one, Cat," Lister said, sarcasm dripping from his words as he shoved Cat's shoulder, "Insult the kid's father why don't ya? Right to her face, even!"

Kochanski lifted a hand to silence the men and shook her head. "No, wait a moment, the ages aren't right. Rimmer would have had to have been a teenager himself when she was born," she turned her attention back to the girl, "Anna, how old are you?"

"Fourteen," she replied.

Kris did some calculations in her head and again took on a confused expression, "That can't be right…"

Anna crossed her arms over her chest, nostrils flaring in an alarmingly similar fashion as Rimmer. "I think I know hold old I am, ma'am."

"But Rimmer would have had to have been a teenager when you were born. That's just not like him."

Lister nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I mean, I know he's always been desperate for a shag, but he wouldn't take the risk of getting' a girl pregnant. It woulda ruined his officer dreams."

"Wait…teenager??" Anna interrupted, "You're kidding, right? My father is forty-five. He wasn't a teenager when I was born!"

It was then the adults' turn once more to stare dumbfounded at the girl that stood before them.

Tapping on the controls of his hand-held device, Kryten spoke up. "Actually, sirs, ma'am, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Time is not linear, and it runs at various speeds in various dimensions. Also, time dilation is rather common in the grand scheme of things. Need I remind you of all the odd anomalies we've come across in all these years? The white hole, wormholes, backwards worlds…"

"Jim and Bexlie aging at a super fast rate," Dave remembered aloud.

"The time drive," Cat added.

Kryten nodded at each remembered situation, "Indeed. So, who knows what time does here! Rimmer very well _could_ have been forty-five at the time of his death…" the mechanoid paused, looking horrified as he let the fact that the girl's father was dead leak out, "Oh, pop out my eyes and use them for fishing lures! I can't believe I just blurted that out!"

"Kryten!!" the crew yelled, smacking the mechanoid about his oddly shaped head. Then, each one slowly turned to watch her reaction, absolutely certain that she would be put in a state of shock at the news. Would she cry? Would she understand?

Anna just stood there, impassively.

Kris reached out her hand to touch her shoulder comfortingly, as she and the boys lead her down the hall towards the drive room. "I'm so sorry. We wanted to give you more time out of stasis before we dropped such terrible news on you. Your father's gone, Anna. The whole crew, actually. A radiation leak killed them all."

"Oh," was all she said as they rounded the corner and stepped into the drive room.

"I know this must be traumatic for you," Kochanski continued, settling into her chair at the console "I remember how I felt, knowing everyone was gone. I cried for days. How much worse it must be for you, though. Your parents were onboard. You must be devastated!"

"Devastated?" the girl's face contorted into an mask of rage, "Smeg no! I'm glad they're dead, the lot of 'em. My horrid parents and my oh-so-perfect brother, their pride and joy…I hope they all rot in hell!"

Spinning wildly, Anna made a break for the door, colliding with the body of what looked like a much younger version of her father, the both of them nearly toppling over with the force of the blow. While the two Rimmers stared at each other, Ace slid to the side and cleared his throat. "I found old Arn here running about like a scared rabbit in the Red Dwarf. Luckily I got us both out before that crate blew. What a time for me to decide to go on a holiday, eh?"

"Ace, man, how are ya?" Lister called happily, striding across the drive room to give Ace a jovial embrace.

Ace glanced down at the fuming teenager once, then again. _Who the smeg…_he began to wonder, then abandoned his thought and returned Lister's embrace, pounding the shorter man on the back. "Doing as good as can be, Davie boy! Good to see you all made it out in tip-top shape."

"Yeah, we all came out okay," Lister nodded, "A holiday, eh? Plannin' on staying long?"

"I can set you up in the captain's quarters, sir," Kryten offered, then amended, "After I clean the, uh, dust out of it."

Ace brushed back a lock of his hair and smiled his thanks, "I'm sure it will be grand, Kryten."

After several long moments at just staring at the Anna, Arnold lifted his eyes to Kristine and shakily motioned at the girl and asked, "Who is this, why does she look like me, and why is she looking at me like she's just seen a ghost?"

"Well," Kris began, nervously fidgeting with a ring on her right hand, "I don't know how to tell you this, Rimmer, but she's…she's your daughter."

Rimmer did a double take; his mouth opening and closing wordlessly like a suffocating trout. "N-no…h-how…" he stammered, then regained his natural look, eyebrows lowered angrily over his eyes, "No. That is just not possible. First, she's too old to be mine. Secondly there is no way I would ever want to have children until I went far enough up the echelons of command. I'd never get anywhere with a couple of brats keeping me down." Everyone in the room spun around to stare agape at Rimmer, and he pouted defensively. "What?"

"No, no, its alright fath—_Arnold_," Anna spat at him, "No need to worry. I won't ruin your _grand_ plans! I mean…who am I to keep you down?"

Rimmer nodded smugly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Right! Now that we've got that established…"

Anna let out a roar of frustration and stormed out, shoving Arnold aside. Arnold simply shook his head. "See?" he asked the crowd of staring faces, "No quiet dignity. No pride. She certainly can't be mine."

"You _are_ joking, right?" Ace muttered, glancing to the rest of them, "Was I – I mean was he always like this?"

They all immediately responded in the affirmative. Ace just frowned disappointedly.

"Rimmer, I dunno much about this sorta thing, but I think you should go straighten this out," Lister advised.

"No," Arnold frowned, "If she wants to be a Rimmer, she smegging well better learn to get used to dissapointment."

The group advanced menacingly on the man, and Rimmer gulped, backing up until he found himself against the wall. "Are you kidding?" he yelled, "I don't know how to talk to children! Especially teenage girls! W-why do you think I was a virgin for so long?"

Ace grabbed him roughly by the arm and pulled Arnold close. "Be a man, Arn! You're going in there and you're going to apologize!" he said, shaking Arnold just a little, then pulled him closer and spoke quietly so the others didn't hear. "Don't make the same mistakes with people I did. You'll regret it later." Then, he shoved the technician out the door without letting him respond.


	7. How Not To Talk To A Teenage Girl

Hey folks...I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! I had a HUGE mental block on this that lasted a few years, plus my life went haywire, so please accept my apologies for this being a number of years late. :-/ Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

When Arnold finally found the room where the girl had run to, he paused in the doorway and stood there in silence, looking around as he tried to think of something to say. It seemed more like a cruise ship cabin than crew quarters. There were no bunks; instead, two beds stood against opposite walls, one twin and a queen-sized, the blankets pristinely straightened. Anna lay on the twin bed, curled up into a tight ball, facing the wall. If she had heard him enter the room, she made no indication as she remained completely still, her entire body tensed with…what? Anger? Shock? Pain? Or, maybe all three?

_How could it be possible that I would have a child, in any reality? I can't relate to children. I couldn't relate to children when I was a kid myself,_ Rimmer thought to himself with a scowl as he wandered to the other bed against the opposite wall and sat on the edge. "So, ah…your name, I didn't—augh!" A sharp pain shot through his hand as he set it down on the bed, making him yelp and cut his opening statement short. Lifting his hand, Arnold found a small cut that was slowly oozing a droplet of blood, and when he looked down to find the source of the cut, he found a picture that had obviously been thrown against the wall, it's glass now littering part of the larger bed that he sat upon. Sucking on his injured finger, Arnold reached across to pick up the picture that was laying face-down on a pillow, and his eyes went wide.

It was a family portrait. _His_ family portrait...sort of. The face of the man sitting in a straight-backed, dignified pose in the center of the picture was him, but older, somewhere in his forties. Next to him was a severe, equally middle-aged looking woman, who was likely his wife, ice blue eyes staring out in regal disapproval at him as he clutched the photograph. To their right was Anna, brown, curly hair sticking out in an unruly fashion, despite there having been an apparent attempt to pull it back into a neat ponytail. And to their left—

"Oh ho!" Arnold murmured and grinned with pride as his eyes passed over the tall, handsome young man in an Officer's uniform, his dark hair cut short and neat, and his blue eyes holding a bit of a charming twinkle, unlike the severity of his parents, or the sullenness of his younger sister. "A son! An Officer son, even! Doing the Rimmer name proud, I'm sure."

"Yeah, how perfect he is…was. You were so proud. Why you had to smeg it up and have me I don't know."

The muffled, shaking voice from the other bed startled Arnold out of his thoughts, a half-hearted pang of guilt coming over him at her tone. _Well, that was a great start, you moron, _he mentally snapped at himself as he cleared his throat. "Uh, right, sorry about that. You said your name was…?"

"Anna," the girl mumbled, still not turning around to look at him.

"Anna, yes," Rimmer nodded, fidgeting with his cut finger as he tried to think of something to say that wouldn't make things worse, "Right, um…well, I'm not your father. I mean, I'm too young to have been…"

"The mechanoid said something about time...flexiwhatzits."

"Oh. Time fluctuations. Yes, I see. That makes about as much sense as anything else I've experienced on this blasted ship, so I'll take your word for it."

Suddenly, the girl sat up and spun around to look at him, brown eyes sharp and angry. "Look, I hope you don't think I'm gonna start sniveling and calling you daddy or something. I didn't even do that with my real dad, I'm not gonna do that with some guy from another bloody dimension who happens to be a younger version of him, okay?"

Arnold held up his hands to fend off her angry outburst. "Absolutely not! I'm not the fatherly type!" he exclaimed, then paused a moment, giving her a perplexed look as he lowered his hands again slowly, "Why didn't you?"

"Why didn't I what?" she asked, blinking.

"Why didn't you have affection for me, er, for your father?"

Anna's eyes darted to the picture that Rimmer had laid back down on the bed, narrowing slightly in disgust. "Because good ol' dad had no patience for a failure like me. I didn't exist unless he had to deal with me, and I might as well have never been born whenever Robert came home on a holiday. Mum wasn't much better. She said I'd never be pretty enough to catch the eye of a rich man, so I'd best do well in school, 'cause a career was all I could hope for."

The pang of guilt returned to Rimmer, not the least bit half-hearted this time around. After all he'd been through, being the failure of his own family, and watching his brothers all become wonderful and successful, it seems he'd turned around and did the same thing his parents did to his own child. Even if he thought he deserved it, how could he think anyone else did? "Look, Anna…"

"Don't bother," the teenager snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. "They're dead anyway, and you aren't even my real dad, so don't bother. Okay?"

"I'm trying to apolo—"

"Just leave me alone!" Anna shouted at him and threw herself back onto the bed, burying her face in her pillow, her body shaking as she burst into tears.

Rimmer sat there in horrified silence as he watched the girl sob, frozen in place with the shock of it all, and an absolute uncertainty as to how to handle a crying female, let alone a crying teenage girl. He tried to speak, but his tongue felt like it had glued itself to the top of his mouth.

Then, with a sudden shove off the bed, he fled the room.


End file.
